Consular Support for British Citizens

Debate between Felicity Buchan and Amanda Milling

Thursday 9th December 2021 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Asia (Amanda Milling)]

I thank the hon. Member for Livingston (Hannah Bardell) and congratulate her on securing this debate. I pay tribute to her and the all-party group that she chairs for all their work. I also echo the words of the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Catherine West), about our staff—the staff of the hon. Member for Livingston who work to support the APPG, but also parliamentary staff, who have to deal with some very difficult cases. Cases where people die abroad or are detained abroad are really difficult, as we know from discussions today and on many occasions in this House, so I thank the hon. Member and our staff for all their work.

I am very grateful for colleagues’ contributions to the debate. I hope in my remarks to cover a number of the issues that they have discussed, but I am also happy to follow up on individual cases.

The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office’s role supporting British nationals overseas is an essential public service. Over the past decade, we have regularly reviewed and sought to improve the professionalism, scope and form of our services in line with the Vienna convention on consular relations by comparing our consular services with those provided by comparable countries. At the recent spending review, the Foreign Secretary identified consular services as one of our four key priorities. We are committed to providing a modern, round-the-clock service, including a wide choice of digital services, which I will come to later.

[Felicity Buchan (Kensington) (Con)]

I have two constituents who are imprisoned in the UAE. I am in detailed discussions with the Minister for the Middle East and North Africa. I appreciate that there is a limit to what the present Minister can say at the Dispatch Box, but can she reassure me that the FCDO is doing everything in its power to assist my constituents, Mr Albert Douglas and Mr Billy Hood, and is treating the cases as the highest priority?

[Amanda Milling]

I can obviously provide that reassurance. I know that my hon. Friend has had discussions with my ministerial colleague, but I will happily have further discussions with her after this debate.

Our service will continue to provide empathetic support to meet the needs of vulnerable British people and their families. At the same time, it will help British people living and travelling abroad to take responsibility for their own safety and will strengthen the resilience of our consular network and its ability to respond to global crises. When British nationals need assistance overseas, our highly trained consular staff are available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Our staff make an assessment of an individual’s vulnerability in order to tailor the assistance that they receive. We have more than 200 consular posts worldwide, with more than 700 consular staff across the network. We track and review the quality of our services through both qualitative and quantitative measures, and it is testimony to the hard work of our staff that the most recent overall satisfaction score remained at well over 80%.

I am grateful to Members for putting on record their recognition of the hard work of those consular staff. Inevitably, as parliamentarians, we often hear about the most difficult cases, in which constituents may be unhappy with the services that they receive, but I too want to place on record my thanks to the staff, who, in the overwhelming majority of cases, have got it right and have been able to provide the support that an individual needed.